The present invention relates to a copy machine and method capable of copying documents of many different sizes.
In the prior copy machine, the exposure lamp scans the document table from right to left. Because of this, the document or original is set on the document table with the left end thereof aligned with the corresponding end of the document table. The scanning distance of the exposure lamp is selected to be equal to the width of the designated copy sheet. Structurally, cassettes of various sizes, containing copy sheets of the corresponding sizes, can be loaded in the copy machine to make copies of different sizes. Before entering the copying operation, the desired copy size or cassette size is designated by pushing the appropriate button, for example. Then, a symbol representing the size of the copy sheet, for example, A4 or B5, is displayed on the operation panel. A scale marked with copy size characters A4 and B5, for example, is mounted at the appropriate peripheral portion of the document table. The copy machine can not indicate whether the size of the copy sheet actually set is correct or not. For this reason, if the document is partially off the scanning range of the exposure lamp, the entire document will not be copied.